The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany(2)

“Hands down, best cannoli in New York.”

A tiny chirp of laughter escapes me. I tip my head closer to the wall.

“I took a dozen to a meeting last week. My team devoured them. I’ve become the most popular account manager at Morgan Stanley.”

“This is what we like to hear,” my father says. “Lucchesi Bakery and Delicatessen has been around since 1959. Everything is homemade.”

“Really? Any chance I can thank the baker personally?”

I straighten. In the past decade, not one person has asked to meet me, let alone thank me.

“Rosa,” my father says to Nonna. “Could you get Emilia, please?”

“Oh, my god,” I whisper. I yank the net from my hair, releasing a thick brown ponytail that I instantly regret not washing this morning. My hands fumble as I untie my apron and straighten my glasses. Instinctively, I put a finger to my bottom lip.

The scar, no thicker than a strand of thread, is smooth after nearly two decades, and faded to a pale shade of blue. But it’s there, just below my lip. I know it’s there.

The stainless double doors push open and Nonna Rosa appears, her short, stout frame intimidating and officious. “One box of cannoli,” she says, her lips tight. “Presto.”

“Sì, Nonna. Good thinking.” I grab three freshly filled cannoli and slip them into a box. As I head for the double doors, she grabs the box from my hands.

“Get back to work. You have orders to fill.”

“But, Nonna, he—”

“He is a busy man,” she says. “No reason to waste his time.” She disappears from the kitchen.

I stare after her, my mouth agape, until the swinging doors slow to a stop. “I am sorry,” I hear her announce. “The baker has left early today.”

I rear back. “What the hell?” I didn’t expect romance. I know better than that. I simply wanted to hear someone gush about my pastries. How dare Nonna rob me of that!

Through the back-kitchen window, I watch the man chat with Daria as he pays for a bottle of Bravazzi Italian soda. He lifts the little white box that I—Nonna—gave him, and I get the feeling he’s praising my cannoli again.

That’s it. I don’t care what Nonna says, or how narcissistic it seems, I’m going out there.

Just as I remove my apron, my sister’s eyes dart to the window. She can’t see me, but I can tell she knows I’m watching. Our eyes meet. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head no.

I step back, the breath knocked from me. I lean against the wall and close my eyes. She’s only trying to protect me from Nonna’s wrath. I’m the second-born Fontana daughter. Why would Nonna waste this decent, cannoli-loving man’s time on me, a woman my entire family is certain will never find love?





Chapter 2




Emilia

It’s a four-block walk from the store on Twentieth Avenue to my tiny third-floor apartment on Seventy-Second Street, which I call Emville. As usual, I’m clutching a bag of pastries today. The late August sun has softened, and the breeze carries the first hint of summer’s end.

Located on its southern edge, Bensonhurst is Brooklyn’s stepchild—a modest neighborhood wedged between the more gentrified communities of Coney Island and Bay Ridge. As a kid, I dreamed of leaving, setting out for somewhere more glamorous than this tired ethnic community. But Bensonhurst—the place where my grandparents, along with thousands of other Italians, settled in the twentieth century—is home. It was once called the Little Italy of Brooklyn. They actually filmed the movie Saturday Night Fever on our sidewalks. Today, things have changed. For every Italian shop or restaurant, you’ll find a Russian bakery, a Jewish deli, or a Chinese restaurant—additions my nonna calls invadenti—intrusive.

I spy our old brick row house—the only house I’ve ever known. While my parents honeymooned in Niagara Falls back in the 1980s, Nonna Rosa and Nonno Alberto moved all of their belongings down to the first level, allowing my parents to make their home on the second floor. My dad has lived there ever since. I wonder sometimes what my father, who was over a decade older than my mother, thought of his in-laws’ arrangement. Did he have any choice? Was my mother just as strong willed as her mother, my nonna Rosa?

I have only faint memories of Josephina Fontana Lucchesi Antonelli, standing at the stove, smiling and telling me stories while she stirred bubbling pots that smelled of apples and cinnamon. But Daria says it’s my imagination, and she’s probably right. Daria was four and I was only two when our mother died from acute myelogenous leukemia—what I’ve since learned is the deadliest form of the disease. My memory surely was of her mother, my nonna Rosa, at the stove. But the smiling storyteller doesn’t jibe with the reality of my surly nonna, the woman who, for as long as I can remember, has seemed perpetually irritated with me. And why wouldn’t she be? Her daughter’s illness coincided perfectly with her pregnancy with me.

“Afternoon, Emmie.” Mr. Copetti, dressed in his blue and gray uniform, stops before turning up the sidewalk. “Want your mail now, or should I put it in your box?”

I trot over to him. “I’ll take the Publishers Clearing House winner’s notification. You keep the bills.”

He chuckles and sorts through his canvas bag, then hands me a taco-like bundle, a glossy flyer serving as its shell.